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General Discussion / I Spent 6 Months Visiting 45 Colonies to Recruit 8 Mercenaries
« on: May 22, 2021, 11:07:20 AM »
Casual Mercenary Experience
My knee jerk reaction to mercenaries with a play through of RC12 was that they cost a lot, and a year long contract isn't very long.
I did hire one mercenary to get a better feel for the cost-benefit tradeoff during the mid part of the game. In that time with the mercenary I did a scanning mission, surveyed a couple of systems and did a story quest to the edge of the sector. The year long contract expired in what felt like no time at all, since surveying systems can take several weeks each depending on how thoroughly you explore, and the travel times to the edge of the sector add up really quickly.
In the time with the mercenary I engaged in one story battle, and just a few pirate battles. I didn't feel that having a mercenary is worth it as a part of normal game play, as you aren't likely to get into enough fights to earn back the XP worth of SP spent to hire the mercenary, including bonus XP. Also just a few mercenaries aren't likely to impact the DP ratio of a battle very much. However it is nice to have a few more ships in the fleet boosted by an officer.
Mass Recruiting
Towards the end of a play through of RC12 I was having trouble with optimizing a fleet for the end game threats such as Remnants, primarily due to not deploying enough fast cruisers, destroyers and frigates to spread the battle out to avoid getting surrounded, and with the unfavorable DP ratio due to lower officer counts, which I had trouble addressing during the battle due to the lack of fast ships to contest and reclaim points.
I decided to try to tackle the DP disparity by hiring as many mercenaries as possible.
As per the title. I visited almost all of the colonies in the core sector, avoiding colonies that are hostile. I hired every mercenary encountered that wasn't cautious or timid. I got a little side tracked in the middle of this to do a main story mission in one of the core sectors. But it took 6 in game months, visiting a total of 45 colonies, to collect 8 mercenaries.
There were four level 4 mercenaries, one level 5 mercenary, and two level 6 mercenaries.
Campaigning
With the mercenaries hired, I tried to cram in as many battles as possible to see how much of the investment could be recouped, and how the higher officer count affects the battles.
It took just over 12 months from the time that the last mercenary was hired, before the first hired mercenary left the fleet. This 365 day contract ended up lasting roughly 18 months. I believe that mercenaries will only leave the fleet when visiting a non-pirate non-LP colony. For much of the campaign I was resupplying by raiding pirate and LP bases, so there wasn't an opportunity for the mercenary to leave the fleet in that time.
In those 16 months I engaged in 16 battles and earned just over 9,000,000 experience inclusive of bonus XP (enough XP to get 9 story points back at level 15). I did waste some of this time getting distracted and exploring a system for a Buffalo(TT) blueprint that some pirate told me about.
Of these battles there were:
A high officer count made most of the bounty missions trivial. The high initial DP ratio meant that the opposing fleets couldn't hold more than one point at a time, and only briefly, and the individual effectiveness of each of the player ships coupled with the DP induced force strength advantage meant that the opposing fleet almost always gets bottled up near their reinforcement entry point. As a player in these battles I didn't care about contesting the points, nor did I need to issue orders.
The battle against the pirate armada was arguably the most fun. The pirate fleet was able to contest points and spread around the map. Since they weren't bottled up in one corner, and could constantly replace losses up to a reasonable level of constant force strength, the battle felt engaging up until the last of their reinforcements were spent. It was still a relatively easy battle given that there was a lower density of officers spread across their ships, and pirate ships are generally weaker per DP than reasonably optimized player ships. However despite being easy, it 'looked' relatively balanced at each stage of the battle and didn't collapse into an obvious rout. Contesting points still seemed important, and care needed to be taken when piloting.
The Remnant battles were certainly a lot easier. Individual Remnant ships are still strong, and they have a high officer density. So even with the DP ratio in the players advantage the battles are still interesting. Definitely a lot less stressful than when the player starts with 40% DP.
Thoughts On Hiring These Mercenaries
I do like the feeling of having mercenaries in the fleet. It is fun to build a ship to match the particular set of skills and disposition of a mercenary, and the fact that you will have to replace them in time means that you have a reason to reconfigure your fleet to work around their replacements. Any reason to try new fleet compositions is good for the game in my opinion. I think that it is good that you don't have the full freedom to pick and choose when it comes to mercenaries. The mercenary officers have more personality than my own officers since they come prepackaged, and I have to work around them.
Officers have a large impact on the effectiveness of a ship. For completeness sake it is nice to have most of your combat ships officered, and it is also nice to be able to put officers in ships other than the most impactful ones. Normally I would struggle to find a reason to put an officer in destroyers when they are otherwise so needed in carriers, capitals, missile support, frigates, etc. Limited officer counts have the effect of devaluing some classes of ship.
However I think it takes too much work to make mercenary officers work in vanilla. It takes a lot of time and drudgery to travel around and recruit a sufficiently impactful number of mercenaries. Even if you keep the number of mercenaries in your fleet small, the feeling of how quickly their contract runs out compared to normal gameplay activity makes finding replacement mercenaries feel not really worth the effort.
In this example I only earned enough XP to cover the SP costs of hiring the mercenaries, and so in this case one of the primary benefits of fighting battles is consumed in its entirety by those mercenaries. Depending on how many battles you fight per year, and the difficulty of those battles you may only be able to sustain 2-3 mercenaries in your fleet.
Testing Different Settings
I've recently tweaked my settings so that mercenary contracts last for 3 years instead of 1, and very slightly increased the mercenary spawn rate such that they spawn as often as non-mercenary officers.
I have found that it is possible to maintain 8 or so mercenaries this time, where the frequency of having to find replacements seems fairly reasonable, and the amount of time it takes to find a replacement mercenary isn't so onerous. It feels like I have to visit 4-5 colonies now to find a usable mercenary, and I think that is a reasonable amount of effort. Three years may sound like a long time for a contract, but in practice it still seems like I'm having to replace a mercenary after every couple of expeditions.
These values feel really good to me as far as fleet building is concerned, as I can have officers in backup cruisers, and most of my destroyers, and most of my frigates. And it is nice to have it balanced such that I can engage with the mercenaries feature and it feel like it is worth the time investment.
My gut tells me that the break even point for contract terms where mercenaries are worth the investment would be around 2 years.
However with these values giving the ability to sustain having 8 or more mercenaries over long periods of time, I think the impact on the balance of the game is far too great against many of the opponents. While it is very advantageous to have officers in the majority of deployed ships, starting with a 60% DP advantage against the opposing fleet causes a huge impact on the ability of the opposing fleet to provide an interesting challenge. A DP disadvantage for the AI ends up trivializing the game, and mechanics such as capturing deployment points degenerate, since the DP disadvantage means that the AI can't reasonably participate. However one exception to this is against large Remnant fleets, where even having 16 -18 officers in your own fleet you are still outmatched by their 20-22 officers. In this case a high mercenary count offsets the DP disadvantage and leads to less stressful and more fulfilling battles.
Final Thoughts
In my experience with the game so far I've had the most fun when the initial DP ratio has been close to 50:50, as it seems like objective points are always relevant as a means of getting ahead, but where it is still reasonably possible to fight back after loosing all of the points. Though I also want to be able to have multiple mercenary officers in my fleet. Given the choice I think I would much prefer the game if we had more ready access to mercenaries, and if neither officer count or fleet size impacted the initial DP available to each side. And that once each fleet is over a certain size threshold, say 200 DP then their initial DP caps out at 150 or so for a 300 battle size.
My knee jerk reaction to mercenaries with a play through of RC12 was that they cost a lot, and a year long contract isn't very long.
I did hire one mercenary to get a better feel for the cost-benefit tradeoff during the mid part of the game. In that time with the mercenary I did a scanning mission, surveyed a couple of systems and did a story quest to the edge of the sector. The year long contract expired in what felt like no time at all, since surveying systems can take several weeks each depending on how thoroughly you explore, and the travel times to the edge of the sector add up really quickly.
In the time with the mercenary I engaged in one story battle, and just a few pirate battles. I didn't feel that having a mercenary is worth it as a part of normal game play, as you aren't likely to get into enough fights to earn back the XP worth of SP spent to hire the mercenary, including bonus XP. Also just a few mercenaries aren't likely to impact the DP ratio of a battle very much. However it is nice to have a few more ships in the fleet boosted by an officer.
Mass Recruiting
Towards the end of a play through of RC12 I was having trouble with optimizing a fleet for the end game threats such as Remnants, primarily due to not deploying enough fast cruisers, destroyers and frigates to spread the battle out to avoid getting surrounded, and with the unfavorable DP ratio due to lower officer counts, which I had trouble addressing during the battle due to the lack of fast ships to contest and reclaim points.
I decided to try to tackle the DP disparity by hiring as many mercenaries as possible.
As per the title. I visited almost all of the colonies in the core sector, avoiding colonies that are hostile. I hired every mercenary encountered that wasn't cautious or timid. I got a little side tracked in the middle of this to do a main story mission in one of the core sectors. But it took 6 in game months, visiting a total of 45 colonies, to collect 8 mercenaries.
There were four level 4 mercenaries, one level 5 mercenary, and two level 6 mercenaries.
Campaigning
With the mercenaries hired, I tried to cram in as many battles as possible to see how much of the investment could be recouped, and how the higher officer count affects the battles.
It took just over 12 months from the time that the last mercenary was hired, before the first hired mercenary left the fleet. This 365 day contract ended up lasting roughly 18 months. I believe that mercenaries will only leave the fleet when visiting a non-pirate non-LP colony. For much of the campaign I was resupplying by raiding pirate and LP bases, so there wasn't an opportunity for the mercenary to leave the fleet in that time.
In those 16 months I engaged in 16 battles and earned just over 9,000,000 experience inclusive of bonus XP (enough XP to get 9 story points back at level 15). I did waste some of this time getting distracted and exploring a system for a Buffalo(TT) blueprint that some pirate told me about.
Of these battles there were:
- 8 named deserter bounties, ranging from 9-12 officers (vs my 16), which gave me 60 - 58% of initial DP.
- 1 named pirate bounty with 10 officers, giving 60% initial DP.
- 2LP and 1 pirate base. 60% DP of course.
- 1 pirate armada of 4 fleets, with 56 ships and 22 officers, giving me 50% of initial DP.
- 3 remnant battles with officer counts between 9 and 14, giving me 60 - 54% of initial DP.
A high officer count made most of the bounty missions trivial. The high initial DP ratio meant that the opposing fleets couldn't hold more than one point at a time, and only briefly, and the individual effectiveness of each of the player ships coupled with the DP induced force strength advantage meant that the opposing fleet almost always gets bottled up near their reinforcement entry point. As a player in these battles I didn't care about contesting the points, nor did I need to issue orders.
The battle against the pirate armada was arguably the most fun. The pirate fleet was able to contest points and spread around the map. Since they weren't bottled up in one corner, and could constantly replace losses up to a reasonable level of constant force strength, the battle felt engaging up until the last of their reinforcements were spent. It was still a relatively easy battle given that there was a lower density of officers spread across their ships, and pirate ships are generally weaker per DP than reasonably optimized player ships. However despite being easy, it 'looked' relatively balanced at each stage of the battle and didn't collapse into an obvious rout. Contesting points still seemed important, and care needed to be taken when piloting.
The Remnant battles were certainly a lot easier. Individual Remnant ships are still strong, and they have a high officer density. So even with the DP ratio in the players advantage the battles are still interesting. Definitely a lot less stressful than when the player starts with 40% DP.
Thoughts On Hiring These Mercenaries
I do like the feeling of having mercenaries in the fleet. It is fun to build a ship to match the particular set of skills and disposition of a mercenary, and the fact that you will have to replace them in time means that you have a reason to reconfigure your fleet to work around their replacements. Any reason to try new fleet compositions is good for the game in my opinion. I think that it is good that you don't have the full freedom to pick and choose when it comes to mercenaries. The mercenary officers have more personality than my own officers since they come prepackaged, and I have to work around them.
Officers have a large impact on the effectiveness of a ship. For completeness sake it is nice to have most of your combat ships officered, and it is also nice to be able to put officers in ships other than the most impactful ones. Normally I would struggle to find a reason to put an officer in destroyers when they are otherwise so needed in carriers, capitals, missile support, frigates, etc. Limited officer counts have the effect of devaluing some classes of ship.
However I think it takes too much work to make mercenary officers work in vanilla. It takes a lot of time and drudgery to travel around and recruit a sufficiently impactful number of mercenaries. Even if you keep the number of mercenaries in your fleet small, the feeling of how quickly their contract runs out compared to normal gameplay activity makes finding replacement mercenaries feel not really worth the effort.
In this example I only earned enough XP to cover the SP costs of hiring the mercenaries, and so in this case one of the primary benefits of fighting battles is consumed in its entirety by those mercenaries. Depending on how many battles you fight per year, and the difficulty of those battles you may only be able to sustain 2-3 mercenaries in your fleet.
Testing Different Settings
I've recently tweaked my settings so that mercenary contracts last for 3 years instead of 1, and very slightly increased the mercenary spawn rate such that they spawn as often as non-mercenary officers.
I have found that it is possible to maintain 8 or so mercenaries this time, where the frequency of having to find replacements seems fairly reasonable, and the amount of time it takes to find a replacement mercenary isn't so onerous. It feels like I have to visit 4-5 colonies now to find a usable mercenary, and I think that is a reasonable amount of effort. Three years may sound like a long time for a contract, but in practice it still seems like I'm having to replace a mercenary after every couple of expeditions.
These values feel really good to me as far as fleet building is concerned, as I can have officers in backup cruisers, and most of my destroyers, and most of my frigates. And it is nice to have it balanced such that I can engage with the mercenaries feature and it feel like it is worth the time investment.
My gut tells me that the break even point for contract terms where mercenaries are worth the investment would be around 2 years.
However with these values giving the ability to sustain having 8 or more mercenaries over long periods of time, I think the impact on the balance of the game is far too great against many of the opponents. While it is very advantageous to have officers in the majority of deployed ships, starting with a 60% DP advantage against the opposing fleet causes a huge impact on the ability of the opposing fleet to provide an interesting challenge. A DP disadvantage for the AI ends up trivializing the game, and mechanics such as capturing deployment points degenerate, since the DP disadvantage means that the AI can't reasonably participate. However one exception to this is against large Remnant fleets, where even having 16 -18 officers in your own fleet you are still outmatched by their 20-22 officers. In this case a high mercenary count offsets the DP disadvantage and leads to less stressful and more fulfilling battles.
Final Thoughts
In my experience with the game so far I've had the most fun when the initial DP ratio has been close to 50:50, as it seems like objective points are always relevant as a means of getting ahead, but where it is still reasonably possible to fight back after loosing all of the points. Though I also want to be able to have multiple mercenary officers in my fleet. Given the choice I think I would much prefer the game if we had more ready access to mercenaries, and if neither officer count or fleet size impacted the initial DP available to each side. And that once each fleet is over a certain size threshold, say 200 DP then their initial DP caps out at 150 or so for a 300 battle size.